Publicly Engaged Design

The Commission on Publicly Engaged Design (CoPED) is a new initiative of Imagining America. The purpose of CoPED is to ascertain the leading edges of publicly engaged design, and develop an agenda regarding what IA can do to leverage our 100 plus institution member consortium to maximize breakthroughs and innovations, but to also meet continuing challenges and barriers.

This initiative hopes to gather together the potent synergy around publicly engaged design in a research agenda, which collects and analyzes best practices, past and present, as a means of developing innovative strategies for engagement.

Scholars and artists within IA have long been engaged in exploring the power of publicly engaged design for knowledge creation and institutional transformation. Members of Imagining America’s network believe that it is now time for IA to consider the state of the field in more strategic ways. Working across disciplines and campuses, the commission will identify, engage, and convene design leaders in an ongoing exploration of the ways in which IA can facilitate and support publicly engaged design.

The planning team officially launched CoPED at the 2014 Imagining America national conference in Atlanta, Georgia. In a roundtable session, design leaders throughout IA’s network reviewed the state of public interest in design and considered ways IA can advance such work at member campuses across the country. Click here to read the commission’s notes from this productive session.

Ultimately, this initiative hopes to gather together the potent synergy around publicly engaged design in a research agenda, which collects and analyzes best practices, past and present, as a means of developing innovative strategies for engagement.

CoPED is co-chaired by Sekou Cooke, Assistant Professor in the School of Architecture at Syracuse University, and Brett Snyder, Associate Professor of Design at Syracuse University.